Coffee Roast Levels Chart

How to use this roast levels chart

1. Pick a level on the ladder. Nine of them, running light to dark exactly the way a roast does. The profile card updates the moment you tap one.
2. Read across the three naming systems. Every level shows its city name (Cinnamon, City, Full City, Vienna, French), the words a bag actually uses (Light, Medium, Dark), and its Agtron number, the only one of the three that means the same thing at every roastery.
3. Or work backwards. Type a bean drop temperature or an Agtron number into the reverse lookup and the ladder jumps to the matching level. Switch between °F and °C with the toggle.
4. Compare the three that matter. The "Light vs medium vs dark" tab puts the three levels most bags actually sell side by side, across temperature, acidity, body, and origin character.
5. Keep it. Copy the level as text, share a link that reopens on the same roast, or download the whole chart as a printable PDF.

Why this roast chart is different

Search for a coffee roast chart and you get a picture. Usually a row of nine brown circles with names under them, sometimes as a JPEG somebody posted to Reddit. Here is what this one does that a picture cannot:

• It reconciles three naming systems in one row. Most charts pick one. City names are traditional, "light/medium/dark" is what the bag says, and the Agtron number is what a roaster actually measures. Only the last one transfers between roasteries, and almost no consumer chart shows it.
• It runs backwards. Home roasters do not start from a name, they start from a number on a probe. Type 437°F and get Full City. Nothing else in these results does that.
• It is honest about the disagreement. The published sources differ by 10 to 25°F on the same roast name, so every level shows a range with the cited anchor inside it, and the two values that are interpolated rather than sourced say so on the card.
• It gets the Agtron detail right. These are Gourmet-scale numbers, which are read on ground coffee. Whole-bean readings run about 20 points lower for the same roast. Charts that skip that distinction are off by a whole roast level.
• It is yours to keep and share. Printable PDF, a share-a-level link, and a free embed for your own coffee blog.

How roast levels actually work

Roasting is a controlled browning reaction. As the bean absorbs heat it dries, yellows, then browns as sugars caramelise and the Maillard reaction builds new flavour compounds. Two audible events mark the territory:

FIRST CRACK  ~196 C / 385 F  -> moisture escapes, bean expands, light roast begins
SECOND CRACK ~224 C / 435 F  -> cell structure fractures, oils migrate to the surface

Light  (before/through 1st crack) -> high acidity, origin flavours lead
Medium (after 1st, before 2nd)    -> acidity muted, caramel sweetness, balanced
Dark   (into/past 2nd crack)      -> roast flavour dominates, origin eclipsed

Where you stop determines everything downstream. Stop early and you keep the coffee's origin character: the florals, fruit, and acidity that came from the variety, altitude, and processing. Go further and those get replaced by roast character: caramel, chocolate, and eventually smoke. That trade is one-directional and it is the single most useful thing this chart shows.

Body does not follow the same curve. It builds as sugars caramelise, peaks around Full City and Vienna where the cup is heaviest and roundest, then thins again by Italian because the sugars carrying that weight have burned off. That is why the darkest coffee on the shelf often tastes intense but strangely thin. The chart's taste bars encode this deliberately: acidity falls monotonically, roast character rises monotonically, and body rises then falls.

The Agtron number is the fix for the fact that roast names are unregulated. It is a spectrophotometer reading of ground-coffee colour, higher meaning lighter, and it is the closest thing the industry has to an objective roast measurement. If you want to buy the same roast level twice, that number is what to look for. A consistent burr grinder matters here too, because roast level changes how brittle the bean is: a dark roast shatters finer than a light roast at the same grinder setting.

Light vs medium vs dark roast

This is the comparison almost everyone actually wants, and the honest answer is that the three differ on four axes at once, not one. Here is how they separate.

Light roast

Stopped at or just through first crack, around 385–405°F, Agtron 80–100. Acidity is at its highest and the origin is wide open: florals, stone fruit, berry, a tea-like clarity. Body is thin and sweetness is still developing, which is why a badly brewed light roast reads as sour rather than bright. Light roasts are denser and harder to extract, so they want hotter water, a finer grind, and patience. Best in a pour over or filter brew where clarity is the point.

Medium roast

Landed after first crack and before second, around 410–432°F, Agtron 50–70. Sugars have caramelised, acidity has softened into balance, and you can still taste where the coffee grew under a roast that is noticeable without taking over. This is the specialty default and the safest single choice if you are buying whole-bean coffee without tasting it first, because it is forgiving across drip, press, pour over, and espresso alike.

Dark roast

Taken into or past second crack, 437°F and up, Agtron 20–45. Oils surface, acidity drops away, and roast character (caramel, chocolate, smoke) becomes the flavour. Origin is essentially gone by Vienna. Dark roast is built for milk drinks and traditional espresso, which is why most espresso blends sit at the darker end and why they hold up in an espresso machine where a light roast would pull sour. Buy it in smaller bags: oily beans go stale faster and gum up burrs.

The one thing that does not change: caffeine. Caffeine is stable up to about 200°C and does not fully decompose until roughly 285°C, well past any roast, so roast level barely moves the caffeine content by weight. The persistent myth that dark roast is stronger has it backwards for the way most people measure. Beans lose water and expand as they roast, so a dark bean is less dense. Measured by scoop rather than by grams, a light roast delivers more caffeine than a dark one. Weigh your dose and the difference disappears.

Three bags, read off the chart

A bag that just says "Medium Roast"

That covers Agtron 50 through 70 on this chart, City through City+, which is a real spread. City still shows clear origin character; City+ is sweeter and heavier with the origin starting to recede. If the roaster prints an Agtron number or a roast date with a drop temperature, use the reverse lookup to place it exactly. If not, the bean colour tells you: matte and dry is City, first faint oil flecks is City+.

A home roast you pulled at 445°F

Type 445 into the reverse lookup and you land on Vienna: the middle of second crack, Agtron around 35, light surface oil. Expect bittersweet caramel, muted acidity, and essentially no origin character left. If you were chasing a heavy body you actually overshot slightly: body peaks a level earlier at Full City, around 437°F.

An oily, near-black espresso blend

Visible surface oil and a near-black bean puts you at French or Italian, Agtron 30 or below. Acidity is nearly eliminated and the body is thinner than the colour suggests. These grind finer than you expect and go stale fast. Rest them under a week and dial your shot coarser than you would a medium, then check the grind against our coffee grind size chart.

Frequently asked questions

What are the different levels of coffee roast?

Working from lightest to darkest: Cinnamon, New England, American, City, City+, Full City, Vienna, French, and Italian. Those nine collapse into the four words a bag usually uses: light, medium, medium-dark, and dark. The boundaries are conventions rather than standards, which is why the Agtron number on the chart above is the more reliable reference: it is a measured colour value, not a marketing word.

Which coffee roast level is best?

There is no single best one, but there is a best starting point: City or City+, a medium roast around Agtron 55–65. It has developed sweetness, balanced acidity, and enough origin character to be interesting, and it works across every brew method rather than demanding one. From there, move lighter if you want more fruit and acidity, or darker if you want more chocolate, body, and tolerance for milk.

Which roast of coffee is the strongest?

It depends what "strongest" means. In caffeine, they are nearly identical by weight, and measured by scoop the light roast is stronger, because lighter beans are denser and more of them fit in the scoop. In flavour intensity, dark roast wins. In body, neither extreme wins: body peaks in the middle-dark range around Full City and thins out again at Italian.

What temperature is each coffee roast level?

Roughly: light roasts drop between 385 and 405°F, mediums between 410 and 432°F, medium-dark around 437°F, and dark roasts from about 446°F up to 473°F for Italian. Treat those as ranges rather than targets. Published sources disagree by 10 to 25°F on the same roast name because drop temperature depends on the machine, the probe placement, the bean density, and the batch size.

What is the Agtron number on a coffee roast chart?

It is a spectrophotometer reading of roasted-coffee colour, where a higher number means a lighter roast. The classification tiles run from 95 (very light) down to 25 (very dark). One catch that trips up most charts: those are Gourmet-scale numbers, read on ground coffee. A whole-bean reading of the same coffee comes out roughly 20 points lower, so comparing a whole-bean number against a Gourmet chart shifts you a full roast level darker than you actually are.

Related tools

• Interactive Coffee Flavor Wheel: click the notes you taste and get a matching roast level, origin, and beans.
• Coffee Grind Size Chart: roast level changes how a bean breaks, so pair this chart with the right grind.
• Coffee to Water Ratio Calculator: dose by grams rather than scoops, which is what makes roast levels comparable.
• Browse all free coffee tools by Clara →

Beans that show each roast level clearly

The picks under your result change with the level you select. The principle behind them:

• Buy whole bean, and buy by roast level. Roast level is the biggest single flavour decision on the shelf, bigger than origin for most drinkers. The best whole-bean coffees are broken out by roast in our picks.
• Match the roast to the brewer. Light roasts want the clarity of a pour over; dark roasts are built for milk and pressure, which is why espresso beans skew darker.
• Weigh, do not scoop. Because roast level changes bean density, a scoop of light and a scoop of dark are different doses. A scale is the cheapest upgrade to consistency there is.

Sources & methodology

• Wikipedia: Coffee roasting. The named-roast bean temperature ladder (Cinnamon 196°C through Italian 245°C), the first- and second-crack milestones, and the caffeine-by-weight-versus-volume finding.
• Sweet Maria's: Using Sight to Determine Degree of Roast. The step-by-step roast progression with internal bean temperatures, cross-checked against our ladder.
• The Captain's Coffee: Roast Levels, A Primer. City-name drop-temperature ranges in both °F and °C, and the surface-oil descriptions.
• Coffee Review: Understanding roast definitions. The Agtron scale, including the whole-bean versus ground (Gourmet) reading difference.

Bean temperatures are anchors from one published sample, not universal constants. Machine, probe placement, bean density, and batch size all move them, and the sources cited above disagree by 10 to 25°F on the same roast name. The taste ratings are qualitative by nature; what a fixture test asserts on every build is the direction every source agrees on (acidity falls, roast character rises, origin character fades, body peaks mid-dark and thins again), plus the exact temperature and Agtron anchors, so this chart cannot quietly drift. Reviewed by Clara Bennett, CQI Q Grader. About Clara · Last reviewed August 24, 2026.

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